Last Sunday, Jason came over and we continued our series of games of Pursuit of Glory that got interrupted last year. Neither of us had strong inclination either way, so random draw gave Jason the Central Powers. We got through the end of turn 6 before needing to call it a day (not bad, considering the rust), and declared me the winner, as things were sliding decidedly downhill for Jason by that point.
I started out with standard Russo-British Assault opening, taking Fao and Basra, and picking on Turkish cavalry units (one escaped). I had a first turn hand that was a little too good, as it was choked with events that needed playing. This included the Royal Blockade and Kitchner, and Russian Reinforcements helped shore up the line in the Caucasus. That was helped by a particularly devastating Enver Goes East at the start of turn 2, which not only weakened the Turkish troops, but then they rolled poorly versus good Russian rolls, Jason largely recovered using Reserves to the Front. He also got the Jihad ball rolling with Pan-Turkism and Jihad, taking Marsh Arabs and Kurds, the latter of which helped take and hold Urmia for the rest of the game.
Churchill Prevailed, but only about three forts fell to RN guns. Egyptian Coup laid what turned out to be important groundwork. Jason had decided to make sure of Mesopotamia, and sent, or built, a good number of troops in the region, built a TU-A corps there, and even spread out into Ahwaz, cutting off Shushter, and threatening Abadan. I brought in ANZAC Reinforcements there, which halted that, though Jason attacked Abadan three separate times over the next few turns, and always rolled poorly, with two ANZAC divisions handily beating a Turkish corps with divisional support. Jason was also taking a fair number of troops out of Anatolia to do all this, but he did use German Military Mission to build trenches in a few important places, including Adana.
During turn 3, Indian Reinforcements went to their usual place (for me), shoring up Basra, and getting a corps of my own in the area. I got two Invasion cards, and used Kitchner’s to put a beachhead off Adana. The next round I came ashore, and holed up in there and Eregli. Jason used Persian Push and Turkish Reinforcements for the extra divisions, but neither of us entered Persia for another turn or so, when I sent a division down to Qum. (During turn 4/5, he used German Intrigues in Persia for the Jihad and put the irregular in Isfahan.)
During turn 4, Gallipoli Invasion gave me more troops in Cyprus, and the two corps allowed me to move up to Konya and Aleppo. Jason used the big corps assets Turkish Reinforcements to organize another TU-A corps in Mesopotamia. Bull’s Eye Directive didn’t go so well for Jason (more bad rolls), but I felt too short on troops when he played Gorlice-Tarnow shortly afterwords and had to take the 2 VP penalty. On the other hand, I had driven him out of Erzurum and besieged it (I failed the first roll, but got it on the siege phase of turn 5).
Asquith/Lloyd George gave me the only RPs of turn 5, while more Russian Reinforcements poured more troops into that front. Drama was high in Anatolia as the British were beaten in Konya, and the perimeter fell back to Adana. But the ANZAC Corps and cavalry took Alexandretta, and the Corps moved south. There was an round where I thought Jason would cut it off, and was prepared to land the French in Beirut to try and re-establish supply. But he didn’t, and the ANZACs moved south along the coast, ending in Jaffa. I had previously moved a reinforced line of Commonwealth troops up to the Sinai/Palestine border, and during turn 6 hit Gaza from both sides, eliminating the defenders and the fort, but not taking the space.
Turn 6 lead off with Russian Winter Offensive, which again did very well. The Turkish line was in dire straights, though it took me half the turn to really see how many gaps there were, and I moved a Cossack unit through Diyarbekir and Mardin, where he became cut off and died in attrition, but the Turkish efforts to do this were well worth a division, and the Armenian Uprising started locking down the entire area. Meanwhile, the Mesopotamian front collapsed with an AP victory from Shelba to Nasirya, as as turn 6 ended, Jason was trying to find good anchors for a new line.
End of the day/turn 6.
Afterword
By the end of the day, I was moving forward on every front. Jason had skipped play of Bulgaria for the RPs. I know we had both gone through our decks once (I shuffled to get my last three cards for turn 6), but I don’t know what happened to Parvus to Berlin.
Overall, luck certainly favored me. The dice went against Jason more than they went for him. However, there’s a couple other things too. I think he over-committed in Mesopotamia. Now, we both think that putting more in there than usual was an interesting idea, and overall it certainly kept me nicely bottled up for several turns, which was bad when I had a Mesopotamian MO once (rolling that earlier would have probably cost me a VP).
Also, over the last couple turns, he devolved into too many OPS and SR plays. Now, I was giving him good reasons for much of this, but the RPs suffered, and as usual, the Ottoman dead pile grew too large, leading to the turn 5-6 collapse. They turned into too many OPS for me too, as I barely scraped by on the RPs, but I was mostly keeping things going. On the other hand, the Max RP marker was moving down as well.
I had early on been contemplating trying a Gallipoli invasion, but seeing Jason progressively move nearly everyone out of Anatolia diverted my attention back to my favorite landing of Adana. It is a problem location for both sides, since there’s three routes out to cover, and I never quite got to sending a unit or two to Antyla to open that one up. With the breaking of Gaza, I expect the next turn would have seen some real fighting in Palestine as I tried to secure Damascus and Jerusalem and force the defenders south, though that was still going to be tricky. I’d had a couple good combats in/near Azerbaijan as well, so I had hopes of a push at that end of the Russian line as well.
